A down-to-earth take on marriage...
"Ay, ay; you want to coax me into thinking him a fine match"
"No indeed, father. I don't love him because he is a fine match."
"What for, then?"
"O dear, because I have always loved him. I should never like scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in a husband."
George Eliot: Middlemarch, 776 (Oxford's World Classics, 1996)
And thanks for the metaphor-comment, alux - I'll reply when I get the time & energy..